A Dangerous Place: D.P. Moynihan

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a 52-year-old former US ambassador who is now a Senator, has always been the center of discussion everywhere he goes. He courted controversy among the Seventy Seven at the United Nations by having to fight Arab attempts to connect Zionism with racism.

He rejected the Indian elite and became disappointed with his country’s policy towards to subcontinent while serving as its ambassador to India from 1973 to 1975. Now, in an equally eloquent way, the exuberant former Harvard professor recounts some of his experiences in numerous diplomatic assignments as well as at the United Nations. His testimony to the major disasters in the Third World and the General Assembly is contained in this book. What he describes as a “innocent enough heart affair” quickly developed into “huge hatred in India.” Besides, he appears to have done little in India. “I gave four talks, two of them lectures, in my two years there, from 1973 to 1975,” he says. Until my next press conference, I did not hold one. Moynihan had seen the signs of the Emergency but he left India in silence. 

The Dangerous Place in India

This is Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s recollection of his tumultuous time as the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations in 1975-76. In Indira Gandhi’s India, Moynihan was a quiet ambassador. Early in the year 1975, soon after his return to the United States, he published his seminal Commentary essay on the “U.S. in opposition,” in which he described well the emergence of a new “party,” the Third World, in world politics, attributed its socialist ideas to the effect of the London School of Economics, and suggested that the United States move “from apology to opposition,” trying to fight not only for the imperative of growth? Is capitalist free enterprise the best way to go? Above all, it is known for its political legacy of individual liberty.

Kissinger informed Moynihan that the piece had made him feel like he “knew what was going on out there” and that he regretted not writing it himself; he named Moynihan to the UN job in early March (which Moynihan had declined in 1970, at the time of Cambodia). After a column in which James Reston claimed that Ford and Kissinger backed Moynihan in public but despised him in private, he decided to resign and returned to Harvard not for long. Senator of New York since November 1976.

The main point of the Moynihan Report

In March 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, formerly Assistant Secretary of Labor, published The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, also known as the Moynihan Report, a report on the state of the American Negro. It expressed thoughts that Moynihan had already been thinking for over a year, and it expressed his belief that the social sciences should be used more in government policymaking for problem identification and description. This book investigates the political uproar sparked by the publication of a Moynihan Report.

The Moynihan Report signified a shift in government thinking about the civil rights struggle, focusing on living conditions rather than laws. The primary premise of Moynihan’s argument – the lack of a strong male role in the Negro family as well as the resulting loss of family stability – was based on extensive social science data extending back as far as thirty years.

Moynihan Meaning

The surname Moynihan comes from Ireland. This is an ancient Irish surname that has been recorded in a variety of spellings, includes Moynihan, Monahan, Monaghan, Monaham, Minihane, Minihan, and likely others. Muimhneacháin means “male descendent of the Munsterman” in Irish. In the province of Munster, the surname is most common in the counties of Cork and Kerry. Modern spellings are Moynihan and Monaghan, with Minighane as the main surname of West Cork in the 16th century. Michael and Mortimer Moynihan, both from Skibbereen, were well-known rebels in the late sixteenth century. Several members of the family arrived in New York City on the ship Hampden destined for that city on December 8, 1846, as famine immigrants. During time of Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector, between 1658 and 1660, the first known spelling of the family name was Teag Muimhneacháin, dated 1659, in the Barony of Tulla. Surnames have continued to “grow” throughout the centuries in every country, frequently leading to amazing variations on the original spelling. 

Conclusion

But, more importantly, Kissinger is Moynihan’s most formidable intellectual foe. While not fully positive about the survival of American and Western civilisation, as we have seen, Moynihan has some hopes. Above all, he believes that, contrary to political elites, the American people are ready and eager to maintain an assertive and ideological foreign policy. The overwhelming public support for his work at the United Nations gave him faith in the people’s judgement and willpower. More fundamentally, Moynihan’s moral stance prevents him from compromising with the “enemy,” and he is willing to die with the ship rather than compromise essential ideals or bargain for a little more time.